Solving GFAB CAS issues WITHOUT removing planes

Game Discussion Arcade Battle
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This thread is to discuss ways to solve CAS issues WITHOUT removing the planes from the game mode completely - I am assuming here that gaijin doesn’t want to remove them, let’s leave it as that and discuss what could be changed while keeping the planes in the mode.

This is only a discussion thread and specific suggestions have to be posted in the suggestion section - I know that, but recently it is hard to actually get something new accepted and not removed, so lets start with this.

Issues and considered solutions:

  1. Planes are “free” and players keep crashing them to score kills:

  • For planes to not be a “free” kamikaze drone, player should have to leave his tank first (counting as death) and use the plane as his own vehicle for the death/crash penalty to matter to him. It can be done by implementing one of the spawn systems from GFRB or Naval AB, where each has it’s advantages.
    GFRB allows spawning of more than 3 ground vehicles which could be useful, and using it in AB would unify both modes in this aspect, while using the spawn system from Naval AB would be closer to GFAB and guarantee 3 spawns of ground vehicles. The guarantee of 3 spawns could be also hacked into the GFRB spawn system in various ways, so it’s not a must to have the one from Naval AB.

  • Crashing the plane or getting killed before the bombs explode shouldn’t be rewarded with a kill from the bombs. This could be handled in a way that to get the points for a CAS kill, both plane and the vehicle on the ground (if the current Air Mission system remains) need to be alive for at least Artillery Radio Time for the kill to be confirmed. In other case, the score for the kill and/or damages is given back to the killed/damaged player, meaning that in case of other spawn systems, player can either re-spawn in vehicle after being killed, or he gets bonus points to spawning into the plane.

  1. It is too easy to score a kill with planes:

  • Bomb drop/aiming sights/reticle should be removed from planes in GFAB, while the forced fuse time should remain. Bombers with dedicated bomb sights dropping bombs from high altitude would be taken care by faster planes spawning assuming the plane spawn system is changed from Air Mission.

  • While getting shot at, the pilot would have reduced awareness as when covering behind the armour plate in front, which would effectively look like over-Gs darkening around and removal of markers for units that are underneath the plane wings-side. Player could still see them if the plane is turned upside to them, but it would make bombing them harder and easier for those vehicles to hit the plane.

  1. Planes are focusing easiest targets and not the ones that matter for the ground. I’m getting killed anyway by planes because there are tasks to win the match, so players use the planes regardless of not getting rewarded with points:
  • Planes only get markers of vehicles that are scouted by light tanks. Players of non-marked vehicles getting damaged or killed will be granted the points for this action, to potentially take another vehicle or a plane.

I think this should cover most of the issues with CAS in GFAB.

Keep in mind that this thread assumes Tank Only mode is out of the question and we want to figure out what can be done without Tank Only Mode, and for discussing Tank Only mode please go somewhere else.

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Air vehicles should only be allowed to spawn to the front and flanks of spawn locations and not be allowed to spawn from behind enemy spawn locations.

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I think it works like this in both naval AB and ground RB that you’re spawning from the side of your airfield, but that’s a valid point that wasn’t mentioned above.

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SaperPL, good points, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with this issue. The “free” plane ride, regardless of consequences, has been a joke. If a player straps on a plane and gets shot down, he should be DEAD just as if he were in a tank that’s destroyed. The kamikaze issue has also been a joke. Spawning over enemy spawn locations as if they used a Star Trek transporter has been a joke. So, I have suggestions how to keep planes in GAB, as per Gaijin’s policy. First, every plane mission counts as a spawn just like a ground vehicle - make it work, Gaijin. Second, all aircraft spawn on the same map edge as their ground forces. Third, to slow down the amount of planes used in GAB, expand the maps to include a usable airfield on each player’s map edge - the airfield spawns aircraft (and maybe it becomes the ground spawn, too!), so this is what you do with the airfield: The player can start a battle in a plane, by taking off from the airfield, or can spawn into a plane as is currently the case, but the player has to start at the airfield to take off. If the player survives his mission, and just as in air battles, needs to land to rearm/refuel/repair, or wants to get back into a ground vehicle, then that aircraft has to land at the airfield. This will (hopefully) cut down kamikazes as well. I’m new to this game, I don’t know the mechanics well, but I’m not new to wargaming or computer gaming and though I enjoy the game and think it could be made a whole lot better, these air issues stated previously are ridiculous and CAN be corrected. Happy New Year, folks.

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I think you should check out how the spawn system of planes works in Naval Arcade Battles. Yes - them counting as your own plane and losing them being an actual penalty is a good base for improvements.

I don’t think that spawning on the airfield/starting from it and landing is necessary - what is necessary though is that you start at specific low altitude around the airfield that is close and you have to go down around the airfield to reload the bombs, rockets and cannons which ensures we don’t have guys that constantly climb up and reload mid air and keep being on top of everything just because they spawned first.

Also airfields should be relatively close to the ground battle area, but also should have 100% effective SPAAs that will kill you if you get close to the enemy airfield.

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I also had the thought that if airfields were included as spawn/reload/rearm zones on the map, in addition to or combined with ground spawn zones, then they could be made capturable, just like A,B, and C victory locations. When captured and under enemy colors, air/ground vehicle spawn from that zone would be eliminated until the site could be recaptured; however, capturing these spawn locations wouldn’t count towards victory conditions, just preventing the enemy from spawning.

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I’ve been mentioning it on the CAS threads for years… not just for making it like it was before when enemies would spawn facing each other but also to never spawn from the enemy spawn side.

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Like you I don’t want CAS to be removed, just to be improved and balanced, although many of my deaths are due to it. I wouldn’t mind a similar system like Naval since it would give me a chance to spade some planes I don’t use in Air AB.

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Yes that’s the point but all seems to me now 90% of the time spawn behind enemy respawn making bombers ridiculous

AB - AAA shouted the enemy plane-helicopter before he rotate the turret another wave came from behind not to mention low ammo capacity and inability to reload at respawn making the game joke overall

Now some planes have CCIP-Balistic Comp for the Guns any way at 6.7 BR like the A-10 + making the AB like in Naval will be not a good idea overall you will need more crew slots and retrain crews making new presets just pain you have already every 2 - 3 month idiotic chances to BRs with no reason and SL are compensated if you have more than 300 vehicles is a Pain millions going to the drain in high BRs for qualifications

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Having 5 crews instead of 3 is not a big deal. Also in Naval AB you can just use a random fighter or bomber if you don’t have yours. The system is there and it works pretty well. One thing I would do to it is to show exactly what fighter and bomber you will have if you pick it, and make them from your nation for coherency and for eventual learning how to play specific plane.

Anyway, getting back to issue of air mission - bomber spawning from either side is not really a problem - the problem is the distance to combat zone and placement of fighters is making it pure RNG because the game wants to deal with this air mission quickly, and making it fair between teams requires time.

The only way to make it fair IMO is to make both sides fight with equal amount of fighters, and then the winning side enters with a bomber that has to defend against SPAAs without fighters attacking those SPAAs, but again - it requires time and if you’re leaving your tanks on the ground, it’s pretty bad idea for the air mission to take more time.

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What you propose will not improve the gameplay at all. CAS should be reduced to a minimum. Their rockets and bombs in the spawn area should have absolutely no effect on enemy vehicles. They should also have a reduced number of them per game, such an F-4E completely destroys the gameplay in modes that are ironically called Ground. Additionally, there may be several such players, which makes the game completely pointless. Planes should have a much larger entry point (minimum 1000 spawn points/1500 next, no more than 2 planes per player allowed). Maybe then it would make some sense. Your suggestions are like those from some farmer’s circle meeting on how to make better cheese and they are debating about the seasoning instead of replacing bad milk with new one. This mode is called Ground Battles, so let’s respect its name or stop fooling ourselves into thinking that the game is normal. It would also be a good idea to have (always) 2x AA respawn options.

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Well, that’s your opinion, but what are the arguments to support this?

Keep in mind that I stated at the beginning of the thread that this assumes gaijin doesn’t want to get rid of planes, wants to keep combined arms factor. Reducing effectiveness of planes in ground battles and making them semi-useless because of that, so players stop using them, is most likely not acceptable for gaijin.

The spawn protection should work on aircraft ordnance - yes, but not sitting constantly with SPAA in spawn area and being indestructible - that’s a NO. There will be maps where spawn area is also a place where you can snipe from, and as such CAS is there also to counter such campers.

I think I’ve forgot about it here, but the balance (data/numbers) is a separate thing from mechanics (behaviors/implementation), and I think the balance in spawn system from Naval AB can be achieved by a negative BR offset for planes. So for example if BR offset would be -1.0, for you to take F4E that is BR 11.0 now in a battle, your tank lineup BR would have to be 12.0 BR which doesn’t exist. It also would mean that you have to have a 2.0 BR in your lineup to be able to pull out 1.0 BR planes. Not saying that this exact number is perfect, maybe -0.7BR would make more sense or -1.3BR, and maybe it shouldn’t disallow planes on lower BR this way, but that’s a balance data to be tweaked.

If only one side can pull out many planes and the other can’t then maybe it means it was already lost on the ground? Or maybe if someone pulls out a plane, then there should be people that will take out SPAA? Keep in mind the negative BR offset assumption. Or your team should also take out planes to counter as fast as possible - it happens in naval, but the problem in naval is that the combination of heavy vessels and coastal vessels in one game mode makes it so that depending on player match-up, what will be the leftover vessels on the ground.

Well, that’s also balance data, I’m not arguing with that. Also just to make sure we’re on the same page - we’re talking here about arcade mode.

What is your argument for this? It’s just your opinion lol. Yours are like “less of CAS winning, more of me winning” which is non-productive in a situation where developers don’t want less/minimal effectiveness CAS.

I tried to suggest some ideas about being able to re-spawn for free if you get killed by CAS and it won’t be approved to suggestion section by mods because they put it under specific vehicles having special rules (and thus talking about vehicle data without historical proof?), which is not allowed. Anyway what IMO could make sense is that to have the point spawn system as in RB and then giving a player that gets killed by CAS enough points to spawn light vehicle/SPAA to keep being in the battle in some way.

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Side note: Not all planes lost are deliberate crashes, BUT i do admit those are far too many…
I dont agree with planes being a spawn. I like it in naval, but i believe it has a too big potential to wreck Ground Battles by making planes too strong (as in RB) and would bring players that dont really want to play tanks. I know we had this discussion before and wont start again, just making the point.
I prefer the game to be harsher when a player loses the plane. A few suggestions would be a larger cooldown before getting another plane, a queue system where players that lose the plane go to the end of the line. System should be even harsher if plane crashes undamaged.
Less overall planes would also be a thing to consider (i liked the change that removed escorts when bomber is unopposed).

This is arcade…most players (including me) like it with the sights and reduced “complexity”…i admit i have a hard time finding and following targets in the allotted time without markers.
I am ok with adding the fuses…not sure if they removed them, but they do feel shorter.

I think in arcade we should keep the markers for the bombers, but more limited ones…no ID and only “visible” targets.
The game actually allows to “mark” targets that have no markers beforehand…so perhaps this was a good compromise. Player would have to locate and mark…but then the mark would stay on target.
The removal of markers for fighters increased open tops survivability a lot…

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  1. Bring your own planes in your lineup or get a random plane if you don’t have one for using for a limited time(so that Ground Battles don’t turn into Air Battles), 2-3min, enough to be able to use the planes either to attack enemy team tanks or to defend your own team from CAS.
    If you survive your Air run, you keep your remaining respawns, if you die on your plane you lose 1 respawn, this will end with the “free” kamikaze behaviour we have now.

  2. Limit payloads or make it more expensive to spawn a plane with heavier ones, this way you would have to do really good in your tank before you could spawn a plane with a good payload, rewarding skill and not luck as we have currently.

  3. Bring back all markers for those using CAS including fighters(not even Ground RB removed all markers to CAS), but remove tank type from markers that fighters see in order to limit the targetting of “soft” tanks by them. Then remove tank type from scoreboard while on the air for CAS. This would also help a bit with revenge killing.

Also why even announce who is gonna use CAS, this gives an advantage to the enemy team, they could just wait that you spawn a plane and go attack your tank cause no one’s there to control it.

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The cooldown makes sense in consecutive strikes, but doesn’t solve the problem of first bombing run deciding the outcome of the battle. If I have a first bombing run without interceptors on my back, And I have to destroy specific targets for my daily task or season challenge, I’ll still do a stupid bombing run with a heavy bomber because it’s now or never. If I’m picking out my own plane that lasts longer, I will most likely not take a heavy bomber that takes a lot more time to fly from the spawn and fighters can spawn meanwhile to take me down. Also I will attempt to drop bombs in a way that I can survive and do another run, and in naval it often means that I’m damaged bit by bit with each attempted (at best) and steadily it’s harder to do something, so in general it makes this more skillful over getting a new plane each run.

Also the cooldown doesn’t make much difference if you have a squad of good players that will be taking bombers alternately, and also does the cooldown disallow you from countering enemy bombing runs? From protecting your own team’s bomber? This is a good question that the answer will get complicated if there’s just a few good players on the ground that keep scoring and if they get a cooldown, they are also denying their team the counter to the bombing runs.

If we are going to allow players using their own planes and dropping bombs over and over again, either by reload in air, or reloading in specific area near the airfield/at specific altitude etc, it should be more skillful and at this point if you are taking out your own plane, you should be able to learn how bomb drops works on them and learn aiming. It’s a bit different with random planes from air mission because you’re always getting something different. Also this is something that makes it so the rockets might be the preferred ordnance over bombs, and rockets are not that precise (talking mostly pre-guided-missile era).
About the fuses - they aren’t removed from ground AB - I’m talking in context of bringing naval AB spawn system to ground AB, and just ensuring that people don’t start arguing about me wanting to have instant fuse.

That makes some sense, but then every target is a good one, and we’re back to the issue of picking easier targets than the ones that are bringing more value to the team. Not sure if scouting is perfect option for that, but still anything visible on the ground widens the range of targets to pick from.

But I like the idea that your team needs to see a target - it could be explained as the fact that you are only rewarded points if ground units confirm the kill.

This gets complicated and with limited time, there’s always a problem of this becoming either about allowing stupid kamikaze tactics, even if you are penalized, but you want to score kills on specific targets, or it again becomes a problem of not having enough time to escape fighters and actually being able to do anything, so we’re at square one of problems with air mission. Having unlimited play time on a vehicle that you’re generally able to use only once in a battle makes the penalty for dying a big one.

Secondly it’s tricky to determine whether the guy died because of kamikaze run or because someone shot him down, and add to that having your tank killed on the ground and your team is potentially losing the best player on the ground that could’ve had some more effective play time there.

Yeah, this makes sense, on top of a negative BR offset that I talked about earlier. It makes sense that a guy that collects a ton of points to be able to make a bombing run with heavy bomber after he’s already dominated the game, but not a guy that just scored first three kills quickly. Also hoarding the points should have an effect of diminishing returns so the more points for plane you have, the less you get for each kill.

Yes - for fighters having markers on the ground units, but NO - for every plane having its own detection of the ground units. It should only see markers of vehicles visible to ground units. Good idea for not giving them tank types on those markers - then it would make sense with scouting to show the markers for scouted vehicles.

Well, with naval AB spawn system that is no longer a problem, but for some reason in RB you don’t have list of enemy vehicle types. Maybe it could work in favor of the team that if someone spawns in the plane, the team can instantly spawn SPAA - this could be a good counter in AB.

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Unless you have a high SP cost for planes if you don’t make them limited in time(or in number) you would end with a lot of planes in the sky, that’s why I mentioned a Ground Battle turn into an Air Battle, also planes in Arcade can reload so someone that gets a few early kills can simply j-out of the tank and use a plane for the rest of the match unless someone kills it. On the other hand, if you limit planes too much, SPAAs won’t have enough targets to kill to make it worth to use them. There should be a limit of planes in the match in order to keep balance and targets to SPAAs. Not an easy task there.

A crash is a crash, if someone got awarded the kill of the plane it’s considered a kill even if that plane died on a kamikaze attack. People do it cause they lose nothing and it’s much more efficient to kill targets at the last second. When a kamikaze attack kills the enemy, the one that does it shouldn’t be allowed to go back to the tank, he already got a kill so if there is no cost people will keep doing it. I prefer to keep my tank than to get a single kill.

At least, friendly markers should be visible to friendly planes, not even Ground RB removes these to friendly fighters, it’s crazy that Arcade does it. But the most important thing for me is the removal of the tank type, this is the biggest advantage that those going after “soft”(or slow) targets have. This was a much better solution for the CAS problem we had than what they did on only removing markers for all fighters.

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The numerical balance here can be tweaked, the air mission with a limited time, whatever that is, is always going to have a problem of the system needing to decide who has the upper hand in such limited time situation. When players spawn naturally, it’s similar to the ground - you have time to figure out your approach against the players that are already in the combat zone.

That’s a separate problem of balance whether allow it, and how to allow it. Again, it was made in a way that it’s too easy, as opposite of players having to land on the airfield, and that’s a bad thing in arcade in general. It could’ve been made in a dozen different ways, like for example you have to go back to a point in the sky at specific altitude like it was in world war, so you cannot indefinitely chase that bomber to the edge of the map, or they could simply make the autopilot land the plane for you, there could simply be an exit zone and so on and so on. But someone decide to go into the extreme and let players reload mid-air because they won’t be able to land the plane and will crash. And that was IMO a bad decision. But since we’re talking about combined arms on the ground, we have room to change this if the spawn point was about spawning your own plane as it is in naval AB and ground RB.

If you limit the planes too much, either by how often they can be used, or how useful they are, it’ll be against the principle of combined arms. What should happen is that planes are equal to tanks in the skill required to make a kill, so they should be balanced out through statistics and either BR offset or have separate BRs in ground AB based on their efficiency.

Well, here’s the problem - if you penalise any player that crashed, even when he got shot down, then people will stop using the planes, and again - that is not what gaijin wants if they want the combined arms, so such system is not going to be accepted IMO. If you don’t penalise players crashing into the ground just because someone scored the kill on them, the kamikaze problem remains. And people will do kamikaze runs for example because it’s easier to aim rockets from close range, and because cannons are more potent from point-blank range.

That makes sense, but I feel like it was done this way so the fighters in general have it significantly harder to take part in the fight, exactly because there are no other ways that the game is penalising pilots…

I’m not so sure about this is enough though. If you have a marker, often it’s really easy to quickly figure out what the vehicle is, especially if you have a big screen. It takes a bit more time for every separate vehicle to find it, and figure out if that’s the same one that you were looking at the moment before. So not having types of vehicles there is a good start, but not having markers for not-spotted vehicles is even better.

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Wow, and I had hopes that something would actually happen for the roadmap, but no. They just pretend that they want to fix something…

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I agree, the system used in naval should be implemented across the board, AB & RB tanks would benefit from such a system. The respawn point system in RB is the main cause of all the anti-CAS feelings as far as I am concerned. And both ground modes could use a lot of work in the air vs ground situation(s). I do like the limited number of planes & sorties that AB has, that would seem to work better for RB as well. Just have to do something about the really poor spawning system in AB. But being able to use your own planes instead of something totally random and generally not very useful would help the plane part. The idea of having more “continuity” between the modes is very much to my liking and would seem solve a good deal of existing issues . . . just my opinion tho

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That’s exactly my point. And on top of that - having your own plane you care more about it and don’t take out stupid heavy bombers risking to be taken down before you do anything specific.

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I’m not quite sure that using the naval AB system for ground battles would be that good actually.

It would be great for US, Germany and Russia, good for GB, China and France , but I think Japan, Italy, Sweden and Israel would get the short end of the stick.

It might be a good option for researching helicopters though, but I don’t think that would make the ‘CAS op’ players happy.